My hair is lower on the sides than this picture and what's left is also thinner. However I had a hair transplant, so it's hard to say for sure how much hair I would actually have if I didn't have the hair transplants. I'm early 100% positive I would be the same as my uncle and another relative. My uncle and the other older relative who passed away years ago are some of the the worst I've seen due to their extreme thinning sides with only a few hairs left on the sides of their heads. I am of course almost there as well, but as I said it's hard to compare me with them as I've had the remaining hair spread all over.

I agree with the others. You are already at 5 months where the hair is starting to grow already. Just cut the rest of your hair to match the length and perhaps use some topic or other similar product for a month or two until the transplants hair grows in more. The only reason I can see to use a hairpiece is if you were wearing one before the hair transplant because I can understand someone not wanting others to see you with suddenly very thin hair after wearing a hairpiece for some years.

If you can get enough time off of work to let it heal then I'd say go for it. You were going to go in 6 - 12 months time anyway. If you go now then you could some great hair by the time your original date would be coming. At that time you'll be so glad you already went through it. Are you also getting a discounted price due to the short notice cancellation? If so, then that's also a big plus.

If he's only doing 2500 grafts on you then I'm going to take a guess and say he is probably going to leave much of the middle area where you have some hair alone or possibly only put a very small number of grafts there. If that's the case then I don't think you will have to worry too much about major shock loss.

This is over a 10 year period. The first 2 were done in 2008 and 2009. Nearly everyone gets more than 1 hair transplant to get the look they want, so that seems normal to me. The 3rd one wasn't until 2015, so I'm guessing that was to fill in some areas that continued to thin. Now he is back again 3 years after that and my guess is again to fill in some additional thinning areas. In 2008 he had a frontal tuft of hair with some thin hair throughout much of the original transplanted area. It looks like that is probably all gone now. You can see his hair looks think in the center of the hairline where he had hair in 2008. Hair loss is progressive. Once you have a hair transplant, you will most likely be back for more over the years to fill in for additional loss over time. Some people will lose hair faster than others and thus will need to return sooner than others and more often.

That doesn't mean you will stop at NW5. The sides and back can drop lower as time goes by even if you see a definite line now between the thick hair and thinning hair. I had a diffuse pattern with very high sides and no loss in the lower back area, but once the thinning area was gone the size of the area kept increasing to a NW7 and it's still creeping further down the sides and back.

It depends on what it looks like. If there's no redness and it doesn't look like you've had a hair transplant, then why say anything about it? That's when you just say you decided to buzz it to try something different and see if you would like it. Even then I wouldn't say anything unless she asked. If you hadn't had a transplant, would you feel like you had to tell her how or why you decided to get a haircut?
If you still have redness or a lot of shock loss where it looks like you had something done, then you may have to say something.
There is also another option which is to just stop dating for another month or two and then you don't have to worry about it at all.

Ideally you should be going to Umar due to the fact that you need to use beard grafts and he can mix head grafts with beard grafts so you don't really notice any possible texture difference between the two hair types. He would probably use a bit more beard grafts in the crown. You can't get this from doing two procedures and you would have to wait until the first one from Diep grows out, so Umar can see where to add the beard grafts.
If your issue is with the $1000 deposit with Diep, then I would tell him the situation that you want to get beard grafts to get a more full look and you think Umar would be a better choice simply because he can do those and not because you don't trust Diep to do a good job with the head grafts you have left. Make sure Diep knows you were satisfied with his work you already had done. Since the procedure is still some months away and you have had a procedure with him already, he may refund you the deposit. He can probably fill the date with someone else since it's not too near.
Did you have a consultation with Umar yet? You definitely need to do that first to see what he thinks about how much head and beard grafts he can get out of you.

a NW 7 is going to need in the range of 10,000 grafts to look like he has a full head of hair. I would love to see this gentleman a year out from getting an additional 1500 grafts as the original posting claims he may do. I personally would put about 300 of those grafts in the frontal mid section to give a bit more density there and the other 1200 in the crown. I think the overall results would look very good at that point.
Results of 5000 to 6000 grafts on other men may look like they are much better results due to them having thick hair growing high on the sides and very small or no crown areas to cover compared to the gentleman presented here. I believe Bill has had over 9,000 grafts for a NW 6.